An absolutely decisive argument against amnesty—from Powerline

This is the first time I’ve approvingly quoted Powerline in a long time:

Jack Kelly argues that the logical approach to dealing with illegal immigration is “to combine the enforcement provisions of the House bill with the path to legalization provided by the Senate bill.”

My view is that we should focus on enforcement first. The argument for providing a path to legalization is that we can’t deport a high percentage of illegals, and we don’t want millions of people living here in the shadows. But until we prove that we can control our borders, there’s little reason to think that the illegals for whom we provide a path to legalization won’t be replaced by millions more who would live in the shadows.

And that’s not all. In the blog entry just below that, the Powerline writer rejects William Kristol’s argument that the GOP can only survive if it embraces large-scale Hispanic immigration:

The demands of those whose votes Republicans are aiming to capture through this posture will not end with such immigration reform. Indeed, it’s not easy to see how, in the face of mass immigration from Mexico, the Republican party could remain true to conservative values while competing for the votes of poor Mexican immigrants and their supporters.

Gosh, it’s been—what—ten, fifteen years that people on our side have been making the flamingly obvious point that the Hispanicization of America dooms the Republican party and conservative politics in this country, and now Powerline is just coming around to it. Well, better late than never. But it is late.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 03, 2006 12:16 PM | Send